Wednesday, May 9th

Here is today’s news on mymix1041.com, sponsored by Toyota of Cleveland:

From the Cleveland Daily Banner…

The Bradley County Commission’s Finance Committee wants more information before recommending approval of two budget amendment requests from the 10th Judicial District Recovery Court.

Jill Barrett, director of the court, requested a $30,000 transfer from the funding line item reserved for “drug court other counties” to the Victim Assistance Program and other contracted services line items. The amendment was for “treatment, drug testing [and] training for adult drug court program.”

Bradley County Mayor D. Gary Davis said he is not sure if there is $30,000 in the account, and cited the budget amendment request deadline as another reason not to proceed. Budget amendment requests are to be turned in the Friday before a county commission work session, but this request was not received by that deadline.

Davis said there is a second, similar request to transfer $40,000 from the reserved for alcohol/drug treatment line item to the Victim Assistance Program and other contracted services line items. He said it is a different account but the same situation in terms of whether funding is available, as well as the budget amendment request deadline.

Both requests were moved to the May 21 Finance Committee meeting agenda for consideration.

Also from The Banner…

The Cleveland Board of Education on Tuesday voted to approve a tentative plan which would change the organizational structure of Cleveland City Schools.

Byron Headrick, president of LEAN Frog Inc., presented the board with the preliminary results of an organizational study he is conducting for the district.

Among his findings were that Cleveland City Schools currently has a “pretty solid” student-teacher ratio — 1 teacher for every 15.6 students.

However, he said the district could do better in terms of how administrators report to Director of Schools Dr. Russell Dyer. Headrick explained that, under the current structure, all the district’s administrative office staff report directly to Dyer.

Headrick says this creates organizational silos, noting that the model leads to excessive meetings to get everyone up to speed on things.

His recommendation is to implement a “program-based model” which would divide the organizational structure into three categories — academics, operational and organizational.

Under this model, the district would create several “director” positions, including a chief academic officer/assistant director, director of business operations, director of student services and more. There would also be several new supervisor and specialist positions, and these people would report to the directors.

He added that having more “decision-making positions” would allow the district to run more efficiently, as not every decision would have to wait for Dyer’s approval.